Insider trading is old news. You know it happens, I know it happens, and most of us quit being surprised by it years ago. Rich people find a way to stay rich.
So let me tell you what actually stopped me cold, because it wasn't the same tired story.
When the US strikes on Iran were still classified, before a single plane was in the air, money started moving on a betting site. Fresh accounts, created days earlier, loading up on exactly what was about to happen.
What they did next should make your blood go hot.
There's a betting site called Polymarket where you can wager real money on whether something will happen. Some of it is harmless. Who wins a reality show. What a Google search turns up. Whether a celebrity couple lasts the year.
And then there's the other kind.
When the US strikes on Iran were still classified, a contract on that site asked whether America would strike by a certain date.
In the hours before it happened, a cluster of accounts loaded up on "yes." Most of them had been created only hours or days earlier. Fresh, no history. Then the strikes hit the news, and they cashed out.
One group of nine linked accounts ran that same play across more than 80 different bets.
They called the timing of the strikes.
They called the removal of Iran's supreme leader. They called the ceasefire. Their win rate was 98%.
Their take was about $2.4 million. The firm that traced it all, on the public blockchain, said the only thing left to say. Luck does not do that.
And it wasn't only faceless accounts. A US soldier stationed at Fort Bragg was arrested for allegedly using classified intelligence to bet on a separate military operation before it happened. He cleared over $400,000 wagering on our own people.
Now think about what that really means.
Somewhere in the chain of a real military operation, there are planners, analysts, and the people close to them.
Any one of them who knows the timing knows something worth a fortune to the right buyer. And there is now a market sitting right there, open around the clock, glad to pay it.
That is the thing that finally united people who agree on nothing else. Left, right, none of it matters here.
You don't need to know the first thing about markets to watch a stranger get rich off our soldiers' missions and feel something turn over in your gut.
But here's where I come at this differently, and it's the reason I'm writing you.
Everyone's stuck on the outrage. I get the outrage.
What almost nobody is asking is how those Iran accounts got caught in the first place. Nobody confessed. Nothing leaked. Outside researchers found them by reading the public record of the trades. The timing. The size. The pattern of fresh accounts all moving the same way at the same moment.
The trail was sitting in plain sight the whole time.
And that's the piece that wouldn't let me go.
Because the same kind of trail runs through the regular market too. Every day. In names you already own.
The informed money moves before the news, and it leaves a mark when it does, whether it's betting on a war or buying calls on a stock that's about to jump.
I've spent a long time learning to read that mark. What it's been pointing to lately is the reason I'm going live this Thursday.
I'll show you exactly what these moves look like in the data, why they tend to show up before the news instead of after, and how a regular trader can start reading them without an inside line of their own.
It's free, and there's a live Q&A at the end, so you can ask me anything.
Set your reminder now, before it slips past.
Click here to save your spot for Thursday.
I'll see you there.
Your Only Option,
Mark Sebastian